Services supplied to users via mobile terminals or connected objects increasingly require knowing the location of said terminals or said objects in order to render a service suited to a user, and in particular a geolocated service.
Hereinbelow, the term equipment item will be used to designate, independently, a terminal, mobile or otherwise, or any object capable of connecting to a communication network to render a service using said communication network, such an object is called a connected object.
Location services for supplying location information to an equipment item are known from the prior art. For example, an equipment item which has a GPS (Global Positioning System) functionality can obtain its location by activating this functionality. However, this solution requires the equipment item to be equipped with a GPS module and the activation of the location by such a GPS system requires significant resources of the equipment item. Furthermore, the GPS system does not always function when the equipment item is situated inside a building.
It is also known practice to locate a mobile terminal when this mobile terminal is connected to a 2G/3G/4G mobile communication network. In this case, the position of the mobile terminal can be determined from an identifier of a radio cell to which the mobile terminal is attached to access the mobile communication network. However, this solution is possible only if a mobile communication network is available in proximity to the mobile terminal and if the mobile terminal has a communication module suitable for attaching to such a network. Now, connected objects do not generally have such a communication module in order not to increase the cost of manufacturing these objects.
Another solution for determining the location of an equipment item is to use the location of a WIFI access point when this equipment item accesses the communication network via a WIFI access network. However, that requires knowing beforehand the position of the WIFI access point, which is not always the case when the WIFI access point via which the equipment item connects to the communication network is not a WIFI access point managed by the operator of the equipment item. Furthermore, the location obtained for the equipment item is not very accurate and it is not certified by the communication network. Such a location is therefore not reliable and in particular it cannot be used to locate the equipment item in the case of an emergency call sent via the equipment item by a voice over WIFI network (also called VoWIFI) service.
There is therefore a need to improve the state of the art.